Oculus Rift founder admits they messed up when they said it would only cost £240

The dawn of 2016's VR revolution finally has its first price tag. A Vexpensive one.

Facebook-owned Oculus Rift took to the gadget-filled halls of the Consumer Electronics Show to announce that its first consumer-ready headset was ready for pre-order. The price tag?

$599.99 (£410), tax not included.

For virtual reality fans in the UK, it's even more costly: the Oculus order page adjusts the price to £499. And that's before you start pricing up the costs of upgrading your computer to the required minimum specifications.

For that princely sum, you'll get the Oculus Rift headset, remote, sensor and Xbox One controller (the Oculus Touch controller will be shipping later this year), in addition to game launch titles EVE: Valkyrie and Lucky’s Tale - all shipping on 28 March.

While fresh technology often wields a high price tag, many expectant fans have been dismayed at the $599/£499 valuation after Oculus' founder Palmer Luckey gave a now-misleading "ballpark" figure of $350 (£240).

"I handled the messaging poorly," wrote Luckey. "Earlier last year, we started officially messaging that the Rift+Recommended spec PC would cost roughly $1,500. That was around the time we committed to the path of prioritizing quality over cost, trying to make the best VR headset possible with current technology. Many outlets picked the story up as “Rift will cost $1,500!”, which was honestly a good thing."

After Luckey became frustrated that the $1,500 price tag was being attached to the headset alone - without the context of computer costs - he suggested that $350 would be a more likely price to compare it to. Which it wasn't.

"To be perfectly honest, our biggest failing was assuming we had been clear enough about setting expectations," he continued - emphasising that the high price tag hasn't been chosen to return massive profits. Rival VR offerings from PlayStation and HTC are yet to be announced.